 So welcome everyone, this talk is delivered by Beastly, so if you want to take it. Yes, thank you. Hi everyone, thank you for coming to our presentation, the last ones. So thank you very much and thanks to the people online as well for attending. My name is Sandra Morales and I'm a digital educational advisor at Oxford University and I'm here with my colleagues to give out this presentation about new technologies and particularly the use of virtual reality in medical sciences. So Shamila, do you want to introduce yourself? Okay, I'm Shamila, so I will be teaching anatomy to the medical science students. So I'll be using the virtual reality to the first year and third year medical students, I want to showcase some of the pilot study that we have done for the last few months. And I'm Xavier, I'm working with Sandra, I'm also a learning technologist advisor at the Center for Teaching and Learning. So as a way of introducing our talk, in June 2023, the Center for Teaching and Learning held a symposium in which Shamila, our star academic, won an award for best poster presenting her work using virtual reality with medical students. So to kind of develop the field of immersive technology at the University of Oxford, the Center for Teaching and Learning is working closely with other departments, just as the IT service department. And we've been doing, I think, immersive tech since 2017, something like this. And I've been participating in this in this. And basically what we do, we try to provide support for teaching and learning, small projects, teaching and also supporting community building, building community support and also research across many departments. So this is a very much an engagement is based on goodwill between myself and other people who are kind of keen people to try to promote this technology. And we try to find keen academics also or researcher to want to use this technology. So for example, over the many years that we've been working with immersive tech, we produce, we've been working on, as I said, research, research, we've used photogrammetry, we've developed training courses, we've developed quite many conferences as well. And then we also use it as for teaching and learning in different fields in classics, in medicines, in music, in history, during tutorials, during seminars with, you know, from two students to 10 students at the time in colleges or in departments. So we have already over the past maybe seven years, a good experience of immersive technology. And it's kind of, it's a kind of technology that starts to develop well in the, in the university and people are taking consideration of this. Thank you. So in order to contextualize the work that we've been doing with IT services and with academics like Charmilla, I'm going to discuss a little bit about the digital education strategy that has been placed in Oxford this year. This is the second time that the university comes up with a framework to promote the inclusion of digital resources. And these are the four core principles of the digital education strategy in terms of foundations. For instance, there are projects that support the VLE that we use at Oxford, which is mainly canvas. There are some departments that use Moodle, but the university supports canvas. Also inclusive teaching that's also very important in the university right now to cater for all our students and the needs of the academics. Global reach in terms of online courses that we can start presenting outside the university and partnerships outside the university. And the work that we've done in immersive technologies falls into the innovation principle of the digital education strategy. So it is a priority in our university at the moment. Also in terms of inclusive teaching and the incorporation of technology, we have developed a digitally supported inclusive teaching toolkit based on the experiences of academics and students of the pandemic. So we want to take learned, we have learned the lessons from the pandemic and continue to incorporate the resources that were useful for students. So and create these guidelines to continue promoting the effective use of technology. So what does the toolkit have? It has students experiences, it has case studies, one of the case studies from Charmilla as well. So everyone can access to this toolkit and see how they can integrate them into their teaching practices. And so in the future, we're looking at developing a similar toolkit, but for innovation and immersive technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality. So that's why we are supporting academics like Charmilla to continue to do their work. Thank you. And thank you, Sandra. Do you? Sorry. Thank you. Right. Thank you. Right. So being an anatomist, I feel like the anatomy is the crucial component of the medical education because it lays a good foundation for throughout their learning students learning here. We know, we know familiar of anatomies like learning from the human donor bodies. So that's how the conventionally being taught through the dissection or projection. But as you see, like the teaching anatomy has been evolved as such a way that it has been supplemented or enhanced or facilitated by a number of tools, like from low fidelity models to the high fidelity ends, like using the pretty printer models or softwares or including immersive technologies. So why we have these kind of evolution, why we need to adapt these kind of evolutions is that so they're all challenges still with the anatomy, but just like the students struggle with orientation with the structures, how it is spatially located within the body. For example, to put it in a simple way, how do you view the aerial map from the top? That's how the body is. So if you zoom in, go down, get to the location, you see the roadmaps, you see how it is all interconnected, it's all knitted. So that's how it is. So ritual reality, it brings that closer look into that kind of vision of knowing the anatomy aspects, even the microscopic micron level. So that's why I feel like we are complimenting the conventional or traditional learning here. So having said that, so we started looking at various anatomy commercial softwares, the ritual reality softwares, and then we come up with the 3D organ is one of the ritual reality anatomy software. We tested various softwares and we picked this because we looked upon the content, we looked upon how depth they have covered, and we looked how it is easy to navigate because and also it is user friendliness in terms of the key functions because this is very key important which I feel like because that would reduce the cognitive overload, not to aware of like how to use it, knowing the tools, key functions. So this is what straightforward, pretty easy. And I also looked upon the homage interaction content they got in that software and how much detail and accuracy in all that components, I feel that 3D organ that fits for what we need and we picked that and we evaluated that and we introduced to students. We did a number of pilot studies, after that we introduced to the third year medical students. So this third year students have finished first and second year in learning anatomy and they come back to the third year just for a revision. So when they get experienced with the VR and just we got to know like how they experienced it, they said it is engaging, exciting, motivating, interactive and increased curiosity as you see all the pink or purple shaded line or more positively inclined. And moving further when we asked would that facilitate in learning your anatomy through VR and the students as you see from the yellow and the blue bit. So they agree mostly they seems like feeling that they're facilitating and the moreover this is the most challenging bit and they agree that helps to face spatial lowering the structures within the human body. Moving on, when I asked where they want to get integrated with the teaching curriculum, whether they want it before or after the donor practical sessions. So they never mind it because because they finished the learning in first year and second year this is the third year students so they don't mind whether it is before or after. But when they asked like how they wanted to get integrated whether they wanted to do self-directed learning or they need an instructor layer and whether they need a combined one. So most of the students they prefer the combined one it means that we need a tutor who should be trained with using this VR and the tools and application along with the what we learn as anatomists. I mean back in like 10 years back when I learned anatomy I relate only on textbooks. Now we have these kind of tools and I should adapt myself to learn these tools along with this learning technique that's why I'm here to know what you got in here how I can take it to my students. So based on that I got these kind of data and when I asked the first year students sorry and where they want to get integrated with this teaching curriculum for example this particular feedback so they this particular feedback which shows that students may want this kind of a session like tailored to the difficult topics not on entire session. So just if they feel like some specific topics are difficult yes they want that and definitely they need a tutor so it can't run in a alone session so we need a tutor and what else they can suggest is that maybe the VR session that could run alongside the practical session or maybe a VR as a revision or review tool to consolidate everything. Okay so those were the kind of a feedback we got it from first year medical students. So how I have approached these VR sessions during the last academic year is that I opened a small group teaching sessions because the large group due to a because we have a number of headsets that could easily cover the small group and it could bring more of interactions so we had a small group teaching and I opened up a voluntary booking sessions in the canvas so where the students can book in their own time their preferable time when they want to be and they booked in and also provided the practicals alongside the practical I also opened the VR sessions for them and especially with the students with the support plan so I looked up on the support plan so I'll see whether the students will have any disability challenges like for example those who have anxiety the students approached me and saying that they can't get into the lab on the first day and we it got the VR stimulation with before they get into the lab so get accustomed to the environment VR environment first and then to the actual environment and there were students who had a hearing and the difficulties who wanted to have the access to their materials so we had a support from the immersive through the VR so looking at tailored to that SSP plan so we can accommodate this immersive to their students tailored to the students need so the what are the future strategies is that coming up in following term or following year is we have planned to fully flat full-fledged in action to bring expanded in a large scale and outreach to get more funding that's a there's one of the challenge bit and the the other challenge bit is the time because we had run eight week of block so we can't run a separate VR sessions so we have to find a different strategy to blend along with the practical session or maybe depends on depends on the students preferences okay the students prefers that I want digitally supported throughout this my learning so we could arrange like that so why we need to acute them because as we know when the students embark in the clinical journey now students have get exposure to the simulations like patient interaction stimulation surgical stimulation now this is an early exposure for them so they can't get acute before they embark in the clinical part so these are the strategies we adopted that's the future part and the last slide is that basically the university now has recognized that we need to to invest in these so we've received fundings from the university that have been spread over three years to build the competencies competency centers on emergency technology there are different type of centers already existing for example on cyber security automations this is kind of place where you can go and ask for help support advice and maybe small grants so we have a big fundings now that we can support immersive technology uh just for example people like uh actually yeah thank you thank you very much happy to take questions yes how much do you think that there's a mobility factor sort of knowing they are or do you feel that start shifting to mainstream I think I think it starts to be the fact that I mean my own personal view the fact that the university is investing in immersive tech now it's going to become more mainstream it's less it's less challenging than AI for example you know like you know it's also it's issues with AI at the moment but it seems to be more you know we've been trying either for five six years already so seems to be more settled so I was interested in the results that you were showing about from the student reactions to the uh to the lab but I had one two data with this one yeah is this their first encounter with VR yeah first time experience with the VR right in any context in any context that was the first time yeah yeah and it was not tailored to any specific topic just the overall experience how they felt yes and now we are tailoring to specific topics in next academic year yeah well they've been the student find it difficult saying that I feel like knowing anatomy of AI is difficult definitely movements of AI knowing that movement is difficult so these kind of softwares would help yeah do you have any plans to push the stressor from whether it has a measurable impact on student success because I think now I find involved in eating I find it interesting increase my curiosity do you think that will play out um that's a good question so uh looking up on um few of our medical I mean articles so they're all studies they said like VR enhancers DR I mean the learning through cadaver is is not that kind of giving a more success rate something like that but we are not looking into that we are just giving a supplementing that so students can pick the thing like I prefer this VR for my learning okay students prefer any 3d anatomy software they can pick that so we are going to give like a uh uh choices for them to choose yeah I think that's all for this thank you